mouldings of the whole entablature, viz. architrave, frieze and cornice. At a still earlier date in Syria the same had been done in the Propylaea of the temple at Damascus (A.D. 151) and other examples are found in North Africa.
Now when Constantine transferred the capital to Byzantium, he is said to have imported immense quantities of monolith columns from Rome, and also workmen to carry out the embellishments of the new capital; for his work there was not confined to churches, but included amphitheatres, palaces, thermae and other public buildings. Owing to the haste with which these were built, and in some cases probably to the ephemeral materials employed, for the roofs of the churches were only in timber, all these early works have been swept away; but there remain two structures at least, which are said to date from Constantine’s time, viz. the Binbirderek or cistern of a thousand columns, and the Yeri-Batan-Serai, both in Constantinople. As one of the first tasks a Roman emperor set himself to perform was the provision of an ample supply of water, of which Byzantium was much in need, there is every reason to suppose that they are correctly attributed to Constantine’s time. If so, as the construction of their vaults is quite different from that employed by the Romans, it suggests that there already existed in the East a traditional method of building vaults of which the emperor availed himself; and, although it is not possible to trace all the earlier developments, the traditional art of the East, found throughout Syria and Asia Minor, must from the first have wrought great changes in the architectural style, and in some measure this would account for the comparatively short period of two centuries which elapsed between the foundation of the new empire and the culminating period of the style under Justinian in A.D. 532–558.
Constantine is said to have built three churches in Palestine, but these have either disappeared or have been reconstructed since; an early basilican church is that of St John Studius (the Baptist) in Constantinople, dating from A.D. 463, and though it shows but little deviation from classic examples, in the design and vigorous execution of the carving in the capitals and the entablature we find the germ of the new style. The next typical example is that found in the church of St Demetrius at Salonica, a basilican church with atrium in front, a narthex, nave and double aisles, with capacious galleries on the first floor for women, and an apsidal termination to the nave. Instead of the classic entablature, the monolithic columns of the nave carry arches both on the ground and upper storeys; above the capitals, however, we find a new feature known as the dosseret, already employed in the two cisterns referred to, a cubical block projecting beyond the capital on each side and enabling it to carry a thicker wall above. In later examples, when the aisles were vaulted, the dosseret served a still more important purpose, in carrying the springing of the vaults. The nave and aisles of this church of St Demetrius were covered with timber roofs, as the architects had neither the knowledge, the skill, nor perhaps the materials to build vaults, so as to render the whole church indestructible by fire.
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| Fig. 27.—Plan of SS. Sergius and Bacchus. |
One of the first attempts at this (though the early date given is disputed) would seem to have been made at Hierapolis, on the borders of Phrygia in Asia Minor, where there are two churches covered with barrel vaults carried on transverse ribs across the nave, the thrust of which was met by carrying up solid walls on each side, these walls being pierced with openings so as to form aisles on the ground floor and galleries above. The same system was carried out a century earlier in central Syria, where, in consequence of the absence of timber, the buildings had to be roofed with slabs of stone carried on arches across the nave. It is probable that in course of time other examples will be found in Asia Minor, giving a more definite clue to the next development, which we find in the work of Justinian, who would seem to have recognized that the employment of timber or combustible materials was fatal to the long duration of such buildings. Accordingly in the first church which he built (fig. 27), that of SS. Sergius and Bacchus (A.D. 527), the whole building is vaulted; the church is about 100 ft. square, with a narthex on one side. The central portion of the church is octagonal (52 ft. wide), and is covered by a dome, carried on arches across the eight sides, which are filled in with columns on two storeys. These are recessed on the diagonal lines, forming apses. The vault is divided into thirty-two zones, the zones being alternately flat and concave.
We now pass to Justinian’s greatest work, the church of St Sophia (fig. 28), begun in 532 and dedicated in 537, which marks the highest development of the Byzantine style and became the model on which all Greek churches, and even the mosques built by the Mahommedans in Constantinople, from the 15th century onwards, were based. The architects employed were Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus of Miletus, and the problem they had to solve was that of carrying a dome 107 ft. in diameter on four arches. The four arches formed a square on plan, and between them were built spherical pendentives, which, overhanging the angles, reduced the centre to a circle on which the dome was built. This dome fell down in 555, and when rebuilt was raised higher and pierced round its lower part with forty circular-headed windows, which give an extraordinary lightness to the structure. At the east and west ends are immense apses, the full width of the dome, which are again subdivided into three smaller apses. The north and south arches are filled with lofty columns carrying arches opening into the aisle on the ground storey and a gallery on the upper storey, the walls above being pierced with windows of immense size. The church was built in brick, and internally the walls were encased with thin slabs of precious marble up to a great height (fig. 29). The walls and vault above were covered with mosaics on a gold ground, which, as they represented Christian subjects, were all covered over with stucco by the Turks after the taking of Constantinople. During the restoration in the middle of the 19th century, when it became necessary to strip off the stucco, these mosaics were all drawn and published by Salzenburg, and they were covered again with plaster to prevent their destruction by the Turks. The columns of the whole church on the ground floor are of porphyry, and on the upper storey of verd antique. The length of the church from entrance door to eastern apse is 260 ft.; in width, including the aisles, it measures 238 ft., and it measures 175 ft. to the apex of the dome. The columns and arches give scale to the small apses, the small apses to the larger ones, and the latter to the dome, so that its immense size is grasped from the first. The lighting is admirably distributed, and the rich decoration of the marble slabs, the monolith columns, the elaborate carving of the capitals, the beautiful marble inlays of the spandrils above the arches, and the glimpse here and there of some of the mosaic, which shows through the stucco, give to this church an effect which is unparalleled by any other interior in the world. The narthex or entrance vestibule forms a magnificent hall 240 ft. in length, equally richly decorated. Externally the building has little pretensions to architectural beauty, but its dimensions and varied outline, with the groups of smaller and larger apses and domes, make it an impressive structure, to which the Turkish minarets, though ungainly, add picturesqueness.
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| Fig. 28.—Plan of St Sophia. |
